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By Debbie Schlussel
Many people have e-mailed asking for my opinion on the emerging Operation Able Danger story–in which army intelligence personnel were barred from notifying the FBI about Mohammed Atta.
While I agree that the Pentagon lawyers who stopped the Able Danger operatives from notifying the FBI are culpable, and their behavior is an outrage, my take is different from most conservative commentators.
I really don’t think the FBI would have acted on the information. Instead, today, we’d be sweeping under the rug yet more ineptitude by the, unfortunately, “lead agency” in the War on Terror.
Let’s look at what the FBI has done with other similar information they received before and, even worse, AFTER 9/11. Let’s look at what the agency and its sleazy allies have done to harm brave men who did what the Able Danger men did not–men like FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, who warned the FBI to do something about the Al-Qaeda funding network.
Here’s the FBI record:

* Warnings about 9/11 hijackers Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi living in San Diego and behaving suspiciously according to their informant landlord. (Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of Able Danger said his group had info on Al-Midhar and Al-Hazmi, too.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by FBI Special Agent Wright about an extensive Al-Qaeda funding network in the U.S. (tied to HAMAS funding network). Wright told his FBI superiors that if something wasn’t done to stop them, more people would die. More people did die. Still . . .
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. THEN, THE FBI FIRED BOB WRIGHT. (It was Customs, now ICE, that fortunately acted on Wright’s info.)
* Warnings by FBI investigators about a man named Zaccarias Moussaoui who wanted to learn how to steer planes but not how to take off or land. Warnings by Canadian and French intelligence that Moussaoui was a terrorist who’d trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. FBI agents, including counsel Coleen Rowley, begged to search the hard drive in Moussaoui’s computer.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by several operators of flight schools that mysterious Middle Eastern men wanted to learn how to steer planes, but again, not how to take-off or land.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
AFTER 9/11:
* Multiple, repeated requests to the FBI, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge for Houston, Joe Webber, for permission to conduct wire-taps and a full-fledged investigation into Al-Qaeda operatives in Texas. (Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is investigating this says there are dozens of such investigations.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. WEBBER IS NOW BEING INVESTIGATED.
* A Southfield, Michigan Islamic “charity,” which openly declared on its taxes that it gave millions to HAMAS, has personnel deported for being members of Qaeda, raised money at a Los Angeles fundraiser for “more uprisings like the one in Fallujah.”
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
When the FBI did do something, it was equally distressing:
* Planned to give an award to a marriage fraud perpetrator and terrorist PFLP member Imad Hamad, who openly praises Islamic terrorists, is believed to be involved in a money scheme with similarly illicit parties, and is closely tied to various terror-related deportees. After I wrote about it, the FBI revoked the award, but then put out at least five different BS explanations for the revocation.
* FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that he will never use the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” together, according to Paul Sperry’s “Infiltration.”
* Top FBI brass, including Mueller, declared in lawsuit depositions that they knew little about Bin Laden or terrorism, yet kept a patriotic Arab agent who knew a great deal from getting top terrorism-related jobs.
Given all of this, a very abbreviated list of FBI foul-ups, inaction, and transgressions in the agency’s non-War on Terror, do you really believe the FBI would have done a damned thing about Atta with Able Danger’s information?
If so, I have some land under a building named after J. Edgar Hoover to sell you.

25 Responses

I am convinced that the FBI would have done nothing. I personally think it is because we still had holdovers from the Clinton Administration. Everything keeps pointing back to them. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has coddled the Clinton appointees too long. They should have been booted out immediately.

It occurs to methat all the finger pointing in the world accomplishes little and clouds the real, substantive issues. It is in the nature of government to be inefficient, sometimes with deadly results. Additionally, the current situation we face is attempting to defeat a worldwide death cult that has as its purpose the destruction of Western civilization. There is little that can be done to change the inefficiencies of bloated government. All we can hope for is to try and avoid the errors of the past. The real battle is the seeking out and destruction of this Islamic death cult and its members. A more substantive debate would weigh whether it is in our interest to be bogged down in Iraq with the daily loss of mor of our heroic young people, or to get on with the task at hand in a more mobile and efficient way.

I believe that the Intelligence Oversight directives, not only prevented US Army personnel from collecting the data on people in the U.S. and passing on the data would have revealed a collection effort that probably was not fully authorized in the first place.

If you want the FBI to act, then they must be convinced that it is a right wing extremist group and that Randy Weaver is involved. Then the FBI will assassinate each and every one of the individuals involved, there will be an investigation, and the investigation will be followed up with a finding of “no wrong doing.”

Another important point about 09-11.. The hijackers took over the planes using box cutters and utility knives.. IF there had been ONE highly trained and well armed law enforcement officer on each aircraft – 09-11 never would have happened.. regardless of all the finger pointing that has taken place since that tragic day it is unlikely that the hijackers would have tried that “mission” if they knew that well armed and trained persons were on each plane and that they were ready to use deadly force to prevent a hijacking..

Wildfire, maybe, but I’m not so sure. What about the flight that woman (Annie Jacobsen) was on, from Detroit to LA, which seemed to be a hijacking rehearsal (and possible attempt)? That was AFTER 9/11, when there might (or might not be) Federal Air Marshalls (armed) on board. Didn’t seem to stop their test pattern.
Then, there’s the Shoe Bomber. In his e-mail diaries/reports to Al-Qaeda, published in the Wall St. Journal, he was also trying to see if he could blow up an ElAl flight to Israel, first, (he failed, so tried the Air France flight later). Israeli officials confirmed what he wrote. He tried to get on the flight with a shoe bomb, and the Israelis questioned him for a long time. They knew he was bad and switched his seat several times until they finally sat him in the very back of the plane between two Israeli air marshalls. It is intentionally publicized that all ElAl flights have armed marshalls on board (but Richard Reid tried anyway). Our enemies are not so easily deterred.

As a reminder, please be certain to come back Tuesday for Carnival of Liberty VIII hosted here. I will set to auto-post at 6 AM Eastern time so you can look before work if you want. If any of you LLPer’s need it earlier, email me before Monday mornin…

I want someone to look into the FBI office in the Southrern District of NYC in the year or so leading up to 9.11. Someone or some operation in that office–Mary Jo White’s office–royally pissed off the terrorism court, FISA, during that period. To the point where FISA was angry with the whole DoJ. One FBI agent from the southern NYC office was even barred from giving any evidence to FISA because of the wilful manipulation of that court and the lies the court was being told.
Was the anger due to investigations of al Qaeda? or Earth First? or someone else?
I’d love to know if that field office was breaking The Wall because the wall was stupid and harmful to the national interest, or if they were just lazy with respect to the court and messing up?
Here’s a link to the FISA court’s complaint about some of the problems with DoJ and the field office:http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fisc051702.html

The FBI is no different from any other bureaucracy–government or civilian. It is staffed by managers having one over-riding fear: that of having to make a decision. One where you are all alone with that decision– and to have what you decided documented. We’ve all lived that life–verbally dissembling so that a subordinate and his “boat-rocking” idea would just go away. But, if we’re asked to really decide, formally, in writing, I bet that the thought process changes substantially. In the cases of these field agents and the Able Danger analysts, if any, some, or all of them had protested, in writing, and bumped that protest up the chain of command–the cover and concealment afforded “upper management” would have been very thin indeed.